You’re On the Cusp of Being a Very Unusual Person

for Alan Lopez there are these monks in Iowa wandering farm town streets wearing overalls and cowboy boots dancing off the pig sties of their youth and I am not one of them nor do I sit under grey skies in Berlin very well even though I like to sometimes with the monks whose names are not pronounceable by a western tongue nor memorable who have one foot on the floor of the temple and one foot on the floor of the club and another foot on the mountain but I do go alone to a cafe on the weekend where I don’t bring a laptop nor an extra set of ears or mouth and I keep my eyes open maybe I haven’t closed them since I was fourteen when I began to write more than I talked so I can watch electricity bounce between spirits gathering at the tables by the canal to suck at the foam of a cappuccino with glitter in their hair as a memory of the Himalayas and the dead anchor of independence drive my freedom and sink me to the bottom of the water like a duck transcending nips at the fish of poetry while always on the way to empty afternoons